Sermon: Loving God: The Hardest Commandment
Text: Matt 22:34-46
Occasion: Trinity XVIII
Who: Mark Woolsey
Where: Arbor House
When: Sunday, September 25, 2005
Audio link:
http://providencerec.com/Sound%20Files/Matt22;34-46TrinityXVIIILovingGodTheHardestCommandment.mp3
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I. Intro
"Was there one thing in particular that caused you to lose your faith in God?" I asked at the outset.
He thought for a moment. "It was a photograph in Life magazine," he said finally.
"Really?" I said. "A photograph? How so?"
He narrowed his eyes a bit and looked off to the side, as if he were viewing the photo afresh and reliving the moment. "It was a picture of a black woman in Northern Africa," he explained. "They were experiencing a devastating drought. And she was holding her dead baby in her arms and looking up to heaven with the most forlorn expression. I looked at it and I thought, ’Is it possible to believe that there is a loving or caring Creator when all this woman needed was rain?’"
As he emphasized the word rain, his bushy gray eyebrows shot up and his arms gestured toward heaven as if beckoning for a response.
"How could a loving God do this to that woman?" he implored as he got more animated, moving to the edge of his chair. "Who runs the rain? I don’t; you don’t. He does -- or that’s what I thought. But when I saw that photograph, I immediately knew it is not possible for this to happen and for there to be a loving God. There was no way. Who else but a fiend could destroy a baby and virtually kill its mother with agony -- when all that was needed was rain?"
He paused, letting the question hang heavily in the air. Then he settled back into his chair. "That was the climactic moment," he said. "And then I began to think further about the world being the creation of God. I started considering the plagues that sweep across parts of the planet and indiscriminately kill -- more often than not, painfully -- all kinds of people, the ordinary, the decent, and the rotten. And it just became crystal clear to me that it is not possible for an intelligent person to believe that there is a deity who loves." ...
But Templeton wasn’t done. "My mind then went to the whole concept of hell. My goodness," he said, his voice infused with astonishment, "I couldn’t hold someone’s hand to a fire for a moment. Not an instant! How could a loving God, just because you don’t obey him and do what he wants, torture you forever -- not allowing you to die, but to continue to in that pain for eternity? There is not criminal who would do this!" (The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel, pp 14 -15).
Jesus said to him, "’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ’You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets".
II. Harder Than It Seems
It would seem that Charles Templeton and Jesus Christ present us with a rather stark decision. And it would seem in the light of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and other catastrophes, that even God is has difficulty living up to the second commandment. If the God of the Bible exists, then it’s clear He could have turned Katrina back out into the ocean and spared New Orleans. Then why didn’t He? And it’s no use saying that God has given us free will and we are simply reaping the consequences of our decisions. What about those 20 some-odd elderly people being evacuated from a Houston nursing home, whose bus caught on fire and they all perished horribly? Was that simply a consequence of their free will? Do you think they were necessarily more evil that you who escaped such devastation? I don’t think so.
I realize this puny sermon is not going to answer the problem of evil. I do want present to you that the command Jesus gives us is not simply a call to some ooey-gooey feeling for God. In fact, it’s not a command to feeling at all; it’s a command to radical obedience -- not simply in outward conformity -- but to genuine, inward motivations. So much of the time we hear exhortations to come to God because He will turn your scars into stars; He will carry you when you can go no farther. However, Jesus’ call is to love God when He confronts you with your own dead child, or your own mortality, or some other impossible burden. Those of us who came to Him for eternal life -- and I count myself among them -- flunk this test miserably. The great reformer Martin Luther, before his rediscovery of the gospel of Jesus and Paul of justification by grace alone thru faith alone, was agonizing over his own inability to keep God’s commandments or to even make proper penance for them. When someone suggested to him that he was trying too hard -- all he really had to do was to "love God" -- his response was, "Love God? Sometimes I hate Him!"
III. The Kommandant
I have a rather personal illustration that made this truth a rather painful reality to me. Although very much unlike Martin Luther in his insight and bravery, I do share with him his struggle for assurance that God has forgiven his sins. My battle took a rather unusual turn when I had a vision. Not a Revelation-Of-John type of vision; it was just in my mind’s eye. Yet it was real nevertheless. In this vision I saw myself as a soldier in a prisoner of war camp. This camp was one of those horror stories that you hear about coming out of German POW camps during World War II: torture, brutality, sadism, etc. Worse, the Kommandant of the camp knew of all the crimes against humanity being committed there, and he approved of them. The strangest thing was that there was a way out. You had to go up to the Kommandant, kiss him on the cheek, and declare that you loved him w/all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. When this vision was over, I realized immediately that this was my view of God. I knew my repentance was never complete enough to satisfy His demands, so I was continually afraid of Him sending me to hell, yet I had to declare, from a sincere heart, that I loved Him. Before you go off trying to psycho-analyze me and my vision, I want to say that far from being aberrant, I believe this to be the common predicament, whether it’s perceived or not, of every person on the face of this earth today, at some point in their life.
IV. Our Predicament
Because of Adam, we are not born innocent, but actual enemies of God. When Jesus answered the Pharisees’ question as to the greatest commandment with love God wholly and your neighbor as yourself, he was throwing down the gauntlet to them. They kept the law, so they thought. Yet who really loves God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength? Do you? Remember when you first met your future wife or husband? What did you want to do? You wanted to spend time with him or her. You loved just being with them. Yet how many of us count down the minutes until we can pray again? Usually we count down the minutes until we can STOP praying. Jesus would work an exhausting day and then spend all night talking to His Father. How many of us devour His word with as much relish as we eat a scrumptious meal? Yet isn’t that a crucial component of love -- to desire to be with and communicate with that person? And concerning others -- who has even spent even one tenth of what we spend on ourselves, on our neighbor? If someone outside of you were to look at your life, would they say that you love your neighbor as much as you love yourself? Who could pass this test? Yet Jesus says these are the two MOST important commandments. Think of the most important law in our civil society: don’t murder. What is the penalty for breaking it? It’s our own death at the hands of the state, and rightly so. Do you think God judges us any differently when we break His most two important laws? C. S. Lewis said that are not just imperfect people who need growth, but we’re rebels who need to lay down our arms. From the newest baby to the oldest great-great-great grandmother we are all in open rebellion. Because of Adam we are all born loving ourselves instead of God and our neighbor. As I said earlier, I cannot answer the problem of evil in this short talk. But do you see that we have all committed capital, traitorous crimes before God and that judgement is inevitable? Is there no hope?
V. Jesus’ Question
Well, I wouldn’t be standing here before you today if I thought there was no hope. Look at the last part of our Gospel passage today. In it Jesus turns the tables and submits His own puzzle. At first blush it almost appears to be a random, unrelated question that He took from His arsenal to confound His opponents. He asks that if the Messiah is David’s son, how can King David call Him Lord? Is the Messiah man or God? This is a subtle question, as Jesus is wont to pose, yet the one who can answer it also knows the hope of which I spoke earlier. Only God Himself could satisfy the penalty for breaking His laws; only man may satisfy them because he is the guilty party. Jesus is the God-man where these two personalities meet. The Pharisees had just asked what does God demand of us, and Jesus gave it to them with both barrels. Those who submit to Jesus as Lord know not only what God demands, but also what He supplies.
VI. God’s Supply
As you come today to the Lord’s table, you, too, can receive God’s supply. Recognize in the bread and wine Jesus’ own body and blood. As you do, you will see that not only does God demand our perfect obedience, and punishes those who fail, but also supplies the means by which our disobedience becomes His, and His obedience becomes ours.
This is the word of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Soli Deo Gloria!
